A colleague pointed out a passage that I had failed to notice in the NNSA document I “blogged about”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1488/nnsa-report-on-us-nuclear-strategy the other day.

I’m not sure that this was intended, but the passage reinforces the notion that US nuclear weapons are for a lot more than deterring or responding to nuclear atttacks on the United States.

According to the NNSA, “an operational” U.S. nuclear force of 1,700-2,200 strategic warheads

bq. will demonstrate to allies and adversaries alike that the United States has the necessary means, and the political will, *to respond decisively against aggression and the use of weapons of mass destruction.*

Note that the bold part not only includes chemical and biological weapons, but it also seems to draw a distinction between those weapons and “aggression” – presumably, the use of _conventional_ weapons.

Guess you _can_ say something meaningful in three pages…

*Update:*

Jeffrey has “more”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/1591/nuclear-strategy-follow-on-white-paper on the forthcoming follow-on to the NNSA paper.

Wade just called my attention to today’s NNSA press release entitled “U.S. Nuclear Weapons Strategy Delivered to Congress”:

bq. U.S. Secretary of Energy Samuel W. Bodman joined the U.S. Secretaries of Defense and State in sending to Congress the Bush Administration’s nuclear weapons strategy. *This document not only describes the history of nuclear deterrence during the Cold War, but reinforces how deterrence applies to present and future security threats, and what a nuclear stockpile of the 21st century will need to look like in order to meet those threats.*

I will likely say more about it later, but you dont really need me to summarize the “document,”:http://www.nnsa.doe.gov/docs/factsheets/2007/NA-07-FS-04.pdf as it contains *three* pages of text.

Hope no one pulled any all-nighters on this. Maybe NNSA just has great word economy.

*Update:*

Nothing really new there, as far as I can tell. The document _does_ promise that the NNSA will produce another “detailed report” that will “lay out the data and methodology used to determine our nuclear weapons force structure,outline knowledge points for measuring progress in transforming our nuclear stockpile, and *dispel a number of myths that have grown up around U.S. nuclear forces.”*

That last part should be hilarious.

I also love that the document names North Korea and Iran but does not name the “*established nuclear powers with aggressive nuclear force modernization programs*” that we’re supposed to worry about.

Why not name France, if that’s who you mean?

*Later Update:*

This post was updated “here.”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1488/nnsa-report-on-us-nuclear-strategy